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Greetings from Provo, Utah
Jul. 10th, 2003 10:23 pmI am currently in my room at the Provo Marriott, with a room-service beer, and, finally, a few moments for a more substantial LiveJournal entry.
I'm still mired in my personal emotional muck, but it's the same crap and the same conflicts as always. I don't want to type the details any more than you want to read them. On the plus side, my back is still irritated, but it looks better than it used to.
The reason for this trip is that my company's home office is here. They decided to send me here for advanced training on our software, which I use every day. The reason for all this is that we certify outside consultants—people who don't work for our company, but who do what we do—and I suspect we cannot make them jump through hoops without making our own staff jump as well. But understanding doesn't really make things less annoying.
I got up at 4:30 AM yesterday for my flight, and left for JFK at 5:30. Lauren and I had been celebrating her birthday the night before, so besides the sleep deprivation, I was a little hung over. I got a good spot on the upgrade list, fortunately, and thus got the last available seat in first class. Delta has monitors that show you your space in line, and I got a little too emotionally invested in watching the display. But sleeping is almost impossible for me in coach, and upgrading meant I got to nap and even worked for a couple of hours.
From the airport, my boss, a cow-orker, and I went to the Lagoon amusement park, which is just north of Salt Lake City. As already mentioned, jailbait abounded. I love roller coasters, but I'm susceptible to motion sickness. I nearly vomited after the first one, but managed to keep things under control after that. I rode one of those free-fall contraptions for the first time ever, which scared the bejesus out of me, but was a lot of fun anyway.
I'm glad I had the foresight to slather myself in a good SPF 45 sunblock at the beginning, as this is summer in the high desert. I didn't burn, but I picked up more color than my doctor would like. Apart from the sun, it was damn hot.
Possibly the highlight of the afternoon was in the arcade, where my boss and I played DDR against each other in front of a crowd of hysterical cow-orkers. (I won, but just barely. We both sucked.) Then the teenaged Russian attendant guy got on the machine, and he was scary-good. But he's there all day with not much else to do.
Today was a full day of training, interrupted by a lunch of greasy burgers that everyone else was very keen on. Tomorrow is another 5-6 hours, followed by a dash to the airport to fly home.
The scary thing about this trip is the amount of politicking and rumor-mongering I had to catch up on very quickly, as I'm usually 2,000 miles away. There was some job-related good news, though, as it looks as though our sales people finally got out a proposal (which is likely to be accepted) that would entail at least $40,000 in billings, almost all done by me. Nothing spells job security like bringing in the big bucks.
I'm still mired in my personal emotional muck, but it's the same crap and the same conflicts as always. I don't want to type the details any more than you want to read them. On the plus side, my back is still irritated, but it looks better than it used to.
The reason for this trip is that my company's home office is here. They decided to send me here for advanced training on our software, which I use every day. The reason for all this is that we certify outside consultants—people who don't work for our company, but who do what we do—and I suspect we cannot make them jump through hoops without making our own staff jump as well. But understanding doesn't really make things less annoying.
I got up at 4:30 AM yesterday for my flight, and left for JFK at 5:30. Lauren and I had been celebrating her birthday the night before, so besides the sleep deprivation, I was a little hung over. I got a good spot on the upgrade list, fortunately, and thus got the last available seat in first class. Delta has monitors that show you your space in line, and I got a little too emotionally invested in watching the display. But sleeping is almost impossible for me in coach, and upgrading meant I got to nap and even worked for a couple of hours.
From the airport, my boss, a cow-orker, and I went to the Lagoon amusement park, which is just north of Salt Lake City. As already mentioned, jailbait abounded. I love roller coasters, but I'm susceptible to motion sickness. I nearly vomited after the first one, but managed to keep things under control after that. I rode one of those free-fall contraptions for the first time ever, which scared the bejesus out of me, but was a lot of fun anyway.
I'm glad I had the foresight to slather myself in a good SPF 45 sunblock at the beginning, as this is summer in the high desert. I didn't burn, but I picked up more color than my doctor would like. Apart from the sun, it was damn hot.
Possibly the highlight of the afternoon was in the arcade, where my boss and I played DDR against each other in front of a crowd of hysterical cow-orkers. (I won, but just barely. We both sucked.) Then the teenaged Russian attendant guy got on the machine, and he was scary-good. But he's there all day with not much else to do.
Today was a full day of training, interrupted by a lunch of greasy burgers that everyone else was very keen on. Tomorrow is another 5-6 hours, followed by a dash to the airport to fly home.
The scary thing about this trip is the amount of politicking and rumor-mongering I had to catch up on very quickly, as I'm usually 2,000 miles away. There was some job-related good news, though, as it looks as though our sales people finally got out a proposal (which is likely to be accepted) that would entail at least $40,000 in billings, almost all done by me. Nothing spells job security like bringing in the big bucks.
